Culture Friday: Crisis of conviction

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 13th of June.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

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It’s Culture Friday and joining us now is John Stonestreet. He is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning to you.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, I want to bring your attention to two recent reports. These come from the Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center. One is a state-by-state analysis of the incidence of Biblical worldview, the prevalence, I should say. It was just released this week. The other details the university’s new assessment tool that aims to measure worldview across multiple life categories.

Now, neither report is encouraging—and the well-known researcher George Barna was involved in this. He found the national percentage of adults with a Biblical worldview is just 4 percent. Even among self-identified Christians, only 6 percent actually live and think in ways that align with a Biblical worldview.

And state-by-state? The top state—Alabama—comes in at just 12.6 percent. Rhode Island, less than a quarter of 1 percent. Your own state, Colorado, John, is slightly above average at 6.1 percent, which may come as a surprise to you.

You’ve warned that many churches avoid so-called “political” issues that are really moral ones with political implications. You’ve also said the deeper problem is not that churches are talking about worldview too much—but that they don’t even think that way anymore.

So, when you look at these numbers—they would seem to confirm what you’ve been saying. What should we take away from, and how does the church recover a Biblical vision of culture?

STONESTREET: Yeah. I mean, that’s been the question for decades, and I’m not even sure that I would say that we don’t think about it anymore, because then one would have to ask, well, when were we thinking about it better?

To answer your question, two weeks ago at our Colson Center conference, the one and only Carl Trueman was talking a little bit about fostering conviction and where this comes from within the context of the church. He talked about when truth claims become instinctual—not just that they’re proclaimed and they’re taught, but they’re cultivated. They’re catechized. They become habitual.

It would be impossible for any parent, much less any pastor, to prepare a congregation for every single challenge that someone might face in 30 to 50 years. But you can train the biblical instinct—that sense that something just doesn’t sit right.

Most people have a “whirled view”—W-H-I-R-L-E-D, not “worldview.” In other words, they have this conglomeration of beliefs and practices and habits that are far more reliant on cultural conditions. As I think Francis Schaeffer said, people tend to get their worldviews like they get a cold—they catch them.

Without that kind of intentional, habitual framing of the truth claims of Christianity—of the true story of the world that Christianity offers—and without continually coming back to the idea that this is not something that is personally helpful, first and foremost … it’s something that is true with a capital T.

By and large, in discipleship programs and church sermons and Sunday school classes, we’ve traded the idea of Christianity as true for Christianity as therapeutic—or Christianity as helpful. And I think we end up seeing the consequences. We might still embrace some of the helpful things about Christianity, but our worldview is actually coming from a culture that is getting further and further from any sort of roots in biblical truth.

EICHER: We’re seeing large-scale protests across the country over immigration enforcement. In some cases, things have turned violent—no disputing that. In California, hundreds have been arrested. National Guard troops and even U.S. Marines are on the ground in LA—not conducting raids, but rather guarding ICE agents who are … and protecting federal property. So … it’s a pretty tense moment. There are questions of free speech, public order, the rule of law, even the use of military forces. What’s the right way to think about this explosion of passion over immigration?

STONESTREET: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about the riots themselves and separate them from the protests. I mean, even if it’s a cause that I don’t agree with, I look at this and say: the rights of Americans to publicly express their conscience is a good thing. And I don’t want that to go away—even if I don’t agree with what the other side is saying.

But the limits of speech here are not in some kind of personal sense of, “I don’t want to be offended.” It’s when actual harm is being done. And of course, we’ve seen that in California—actual harm being done. So I think we have to be able to thread that needle. And there’s no question that it’s a needle. It’s a tough thing.

But I am way grateful that I live in a place that’s protected by the First Amendment, rather than something that kind of gives lip service to freedom of speech, but then actually becomes a tyrannical expression of whatever the popular cultural mood is. I mean, that’s not real freedom at all.

And listen, that’s all possible because we have national sovereignty. If you lose national sovereignty—the ability of a nation to define its own borders, its own way of life, and that sort of thing—then that also is going to render these conscience rights fruitless. It’s going to undermine them in and of themselves.

You know, that’s really what is at stake here when you have a kind of consistent practice of lawlessness, in one way or another. And California is certainly guilty of this when it comes to the immigration issue. Every third-grade student knows it’s not a real classroom rule if the teacher never enforces it.

How it’s enforced—that needs to be talked about. America can enforce its borders without doing it in ways that are dehumanizing. But the enforcing of laws, in and of itself, is not dehumanizing. The enforcement of laws is actually necessary. It’s not wrong.

And you know, that’s really the conflict: whether or not we have these laws and whether or not they should be enforced. And then we have to go to: how should they be enforced?

BROWN: This past week saw a striking clash between two high-profile athletes. The swimmer Riley Gaines criticized a Minnesota girls’ softball league for allowing a male pitcher to dominate the state championship. The Olympic gymnast Simone Biles fired back. She accused Gaines of bullying the girls … and even added some personal insults that seemed uncharacteristic of her … and to be fair, she walked some of that stuff back. What did you make of that, John, and what do you think it says about where we are on gender and sports?

STONESTREET: I mean, that was a fascinating interchange this week. And I just want to say to Riley Gaines: thank you. Thank you for being courageous and being bold, but also for handling it the right way.

Riley right now has become such an important voice on this issue, because she stands her ground. She does it clearly. She doesn’t get really riled up—which tells me there’s an awful lot of confidence with her. She’s confident in what she believes. She’s confident in what’s true. She’s confident in her personal relationships. You’ve got to be confident in your personal relationships to take the attacks that she does.

But you know what was fascinating too—and further proof that it’s a new day—Simone Biles was untouchable yesterday. And I don’t mean yesterday like “yesterday”—I mean yesterday, culturally speaking. You remember when she had the moment where she dropped out of the Olympics and then came back and really had a strong performance. Untouchable in terms of her status, in terms of her voice, and that sort of stuff.

And I’ve got to be honest, I saw that thing unfold, and I thought, man, Riley’s going to take it this time—at a degree that maybe she’s not prepared for. And you know what? There were as many voices—or more—supporting Riley Gaines as supporting Simone Biles. Including Stephen A. Smith, the ESPN announcer who right now is making a career of saying it like he sees it, in a Bill Maher sort of straightforward, not partisan, way.

So I think it tells you that not everyone is on board with this. And those who proclaim that, you know, the science was settled on gender, and that there’s no advantage of a man over a woman in sports, and all these things that everyone just intuitively knows is not true—people aren’t buying it. People aren’t being intimidated into silence anymore. And that was welcome news.

But you know what? It takes courage. It takes courage to take that kind of stand. Of course, she didn’t solicit it. In this case, Simone Biles went after her—which was really bizarre. But I’ll tell you what—it was an interesting “you are here” moment, in my view, on this particular issue.

BROWN: Christian artist Michael Tait recently issued a detailed confession … admitting to years of drug use and inappropriate sexual behavior. He said he’d left the Newsboys in January because he was tired of living a double life … that he wanted to seek healing. The music broadcaster K-LOVE responded by pulling both D-C Talk and Newsboys music from its on-air playlists. What stood out to you, John, about his confession and what does real repentance look like in public failures like this?

STONESTREET; Well, look, I don’t want to comment on anyone’s business decisions on this, but I will tell you that the apology from Michael Tate should be a source of great hope. Because, you know, listen—what he’s admitted to is horrible. But he admitted to it in a way that was a true confession.

Now, I don’t have any insight into what’s happening behind the scenes or anything like that. But I do know: repentance is a uniquely Christian contribution to both the world and, specifically, to virtue formation.

In other words, virtue is a muscle. If you want to be a virtuous person, you have to do virtuous things. Christianity offers one of those virtuous things as repentance. In other words, if you’re on the edge of the moral cliff, the best way forward is backwards. It’s to turn around.

And I hope that what I read this week from Michael Tate reflects that. It sure sounded like it. And I think we have a responsibility as followers of Christ to be hopeful for our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

EICHER: John Stonestreet, president of the Colson center and host of the Breakpoint podcast, thanks again, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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